


Return Next Friday

by cookiegirl



Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: 5 Times, Canon Compliant, F/M, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mentions of Marvin/Whizzer, Mentions of Whizzer Brown, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:03:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22250218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookiegirl/pseuds/cookiegirl
Summary: A five-part mini-opera.Or: four times Mendel listened to Marvin talk about Trina, and one time he listened to Trina. 1977-1979.
Relationships: Marvin & Mendel Weisenbachfeld, Marvin & Trina (Falsettos), Trina/Mendel Weisenbachfeld
Comments: 8
Kudos: 15
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2019





	Return Next Friday

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tiltedsyllogism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiltedsyllogism/gifts).

> For tiltedsyllogism's request of pre-canon Mendel, and how he ended up being disposed to fall for the ex-wife of his patient. Hope you enjoy!

Mendel doesn’t have favorite patients. It’s partly because all of them irritate, weary or frustrate him to some degree. And it’s partly because it would be unfair, and unprofessional, and Mendel cares very much about both those things. He has to admit, though, there is something about his new patient, Marvin. He’s a pain in the ass, but he’s interesting.

1\. 

_November, 1977_

“Come in, sit down,” Mendel says, though Marvin doesn’t wait for the invitation to start settling himself on the couch. He never does, these days. The first couple sessions he was twitchy, nervous, fumbling with the door handle as he opened it, wiping his sweating hands on his pants as he sat awkwardly on the edge of the leather couch. Now though, with six sessions behind him, he walks in like it’s his own office, not Mendel’s.

“I fought with Trina again last night,” Marvin says, by way of greeting.

“Again?” Mendel says. He makes sure his voice is neutral. Non-judgemental. 

“It’s not too much to ask, is it? For her to have dinner on the table when I come home from work? I spend ten hours a day in that office, sometimes.”

“Mmmhmm,” Mendel says. “There was no dinner for you last night?”

“Well, yes. There was dinner.” Marvin scowls. “It just wasn’t ready when I got in.”

Mendel nods. He has a particular way of moving his head and pursing his lips that he has developed in order to look sympathetic toward his patients, whether he feels they deserve his sympathy or not. 

“That’s unusual, isn’t it?” Mendel asks. He doesn’t know a lot about Trina yet. Marvin has spent the first six sessions talking mostly about himself. But Mendel has been gathering information here and there, to add to the notebook he uses for Marvin’s sessions. He always keeps separately-titled notebook pages for the important people in his patients’ lives, and in Marvin’s notebook there are only two: _Trina_, and _Jason_. On Trina’s page, one of the items says _good cook_.

Marvin shrugs. “Yes. It should be unusual.”

“Do you know why the dinner wasn’t ready?” Mendel says. He tries not to think of the TV dinners he reheats for himself each night.

“There was some sort of problem with Jason. He had to do a homework project, and he’d put it off until the last minute, so Trina had to help him, and apparently she lost track of time.”

“I see.” Mendel checks to see if _devoted mother_ is already written on Trina’s page. It is. “And didn’t you want Jason to have a project to hand in?”

Marvin blinks, as though Mendel has entirely missed the point. “I wanted linguine,” he says.

“Yes, of course,” Mendel says, nodding again. He frowns at the nearly-empty page with Trina’s name at the top. “Let’s talk more about your wife,” he says. Hopefully by the end of this session, he’ll have a fuller picture of the woman Marvin married, and next session he can start filling in Jason’s page.

“What about her?” Marvin says, folding his arms. He leans back into the couch.

“Is she pretty?” Mendel asks.

“Huh?”

“Is she beautiful?”

Marvin scowls. “How would I know?” he says, throwing up his hands and then making a gesture towards himself that could mean anything, but Mendel knows means _homosexual_. He’d let Mendel know that he was attracted to men in his first session, although not in quite those words. He hadn’t wanted to be turned away three sessions in when the truth came out, like the first psychiatrist he’d tried had done.

“You can still tell,” Mendel says. “Even if you’re -”

“Yes.” Marvin snaps. “I...yes. She’s pretty. Of course she’s pretty.”

“Of course.” Mendel makes a note in his book. _Pretty._ He thinks it’s probably an understatement. She’s probably stunning. Marvin would have wanted the perfect girl. The perfect image. The perfect lie.

“Do you love her?” Mendel asks.

Marvin looks at him as though he’s an idiot. “She’s my wife.”

“Yes. But do you love her?”

Marvin grits his teeth. “Love isn’t sex, Doctor. Just because we don’t -”

“Do you love her?” Mendel asks again.

“Yes. Of course I love her. I’m not a monster.”

Mendel nods. “Are you in love with her?”

Marvin stares for a moment, then looks away. He doesn’t answer, and this time, Mendel doesn’t press. He lets the silence sit for a moment, writes a little in his notebook, and then leans forward to catch Marvin’s eye.

“Why did you get married?” It’s a question he’s already guessed some of the answers to, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth asking.

Marvin shrugs. “She was pregnant.”

“And you felt obliged?”

“Obviously. But not - not just that.”

“What else?”

“I wanted… I wanted…” Marvin trails off. He uncrosses his arms, shrugs his way out of his jacket and tosses it on the couch next to him. Folds his hands in his lap. 

“What did you want?”

Marvin just shakes his head. He can’t articulate it. He wanted too much, Mendel thinks. It was his first diagnosis when Marvin walked into his office several weeks ago, and it was correct. He wants too much, wants things he can’t have, things he can’t be. He just _wants_.

“Did you want to be a father?” Mendel suggests.

“Yes.”

“To be a husband?”

Marvin shifts on the couch. “Yes.”

“To be… ‘normal’?”

Marvin hesitates, studies his hands. “Yes. Yes.”

Mendel nods again, and the sympathy isn’t faked this time. “And how did you feel? On your wedding day? When you saw Trina?”

Marvin glances up at him then, and he doesn’t need to answer, because Mendel can see it in his face: echoes of a day that’s almost a decade in the past and that Marvin can’t forget. He looks haunted. Desperate. Lost. 

The silence stretches. 

“I felt fine,” Marvin says, and they both know it’s a lie.

“Okay,” Mendel says. “We’ll come back to that another time.”

Marvin nods curtly, and starts to talk about his job. And as he does so, Mendel wonders, suddenly, if on their wedding day, Trina saw what he just saw in Marvin’s face. Did that young woman, dressed in white, carrying Marvin’s child and walking up the aisle toward him, see grief and pain in her groom’s eyes, instead of awe and love? Did she choose to go ahead with the marriage anyway, because of duty and obligation, to her unborn son and her religious family? Did she think things would get better? Or was she blissfully unaware?

Marvin carries on talking, but Mendel struggles to listen. He can’t stop thinking about that young woman, all alone on a day when she should have been becoming one with another.

\---

2\. 

_August, 1978_

“I keep telling him to be careful,” Marvin says, running his hands through his hair. “I keep telling him, and he keeps ignoring me, like it’s a game.”

“How is he being careless?” Mendel asks. There’s a new page in the notebook that Mendel keeps for Marvin. At first it didn’t have a real title, because for three whole sessions Marvin didn’t refer to the man he’s seeing as anything other than _a friend_, or _him_. Now it says _Whizzer_, but Mendel isn’t sure whether that’s a proper name or just an alias that Marvin’s invented. 

Marvin blows his breath out angrily. “He’s not discreet. We had lunch on Tuesday. I took him to a new place he wouldn’t shut up about. And he was all over me.”

“All over you?” Mendel tries to imagine what that would be like. He's barely dated anyone himself over the years, finding the whole debacle awkward and stressful. Certainly he never found anyone who wished to fondle him in public.

"You know," Marvin says. "Reaching for my hand across the table. Nudging his foot against my leg. Making innuendos that anyone could have heard. And then yesterday, he came over for dinner, and -”

Mendel looks up, surprised. “He came over for dinner? To your home?”

“Yes. I said he was a friend from work.”

“And he ate with you and Trina? And Jason?”

“Yes.”

“Trina cooked for him?”

Marvin frowns. “Yes. And?”

Mendel doesn’t get angry at his patients. Exasperated, yes. But never angry. Today, though, imagining Marvin’s wife spending hours in the kitchen, preparing a meal for the man who her husband is sleeping with -

He swallows and tries to calm himself, buttons up his previously-unbuttoned cardigan to give his hands something to do. By the time he reaches the top button he has reminded himself that his job is to observe his patients’ behavior without judging it. Even if that means he has to ignore the image of a woman desperate to please her husband, putting love and care into food that his lover will consume.

He clears his throat. “And how did that go?”

“I told you. He was careless. Trina and Jason cleared the table and when they were in the kitchen, he started touching me. Under the table. They could have walked back in at any time.”

“Would that have been so bad?” Mendel asks. “If your wife was to learn the truth?” He doesn’t say that he thinks Trina deserves to know. He doesn’t think it would hold any weight with Marvin even if he did.

Marvin looks at him as though Mendel has lost his mind. “Yes,” he hisses.

“Would she leave you?” Mendel asks. It’s not one of those questions he poses that he already knows the answer to. 

Marvin stills. For a moment Mendel wonders whether he has stopped breathing, but he can just about see the rise and fall of his chest. He lets Marvin think. He knows Marvin has thought about Trina finding out before, but he figures it has gone no further than Marvin’s feeling of horror at someone close to him discovering the truth. He isn’t sure that Marvin has actually considered how Trina might feel in that situation.

“I don’t know,” comes the answer, at last. 

Mendel nods. He flips to Trina’s page and makes a note of it. He skims back through some of the other notes he has made: _devoted mother, good cook, kind, sociable, helpful, smart, demanding, always wanting affection, argumentative, cold_. Some are things he has deduced; some are things Marvin has said. He is not inclined to believe the latter completely.

“You could leave,” he points out.

“Me? Leave?”

“Run off with Whizzer.”

Marvin snorts. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Because - because - you know why not! Don’t be obtuse.”

Mendel sighs. “Nothing’s impossible. Some people do it.”

“Not people like me.” Marvin is adamant. Mendel understands. He doesn’t have a house, himself, just a mostly-empty apartment; he doesn’t have a son and a wife, colleagues under him, a reputation as a family man. But he can imagine that if he did, it would be hard to give up. Marvin has so much to lose.

“Why risk it, then?” he asks.

Marvin’s eyebrows furrow. “Why risk what?”

“Inviting Whizzer for dinner. Why risk it if you don’t want Trina to find out?”

Marvin pauses. Rubs at his face. Prepares his defence. “Whizzer wanted to. And I wanted to make Whizzer happy.”

Mendel nods again. “Okay, then.” He doesn’t think Marvin is trying to get caught, not on purpose. Not consciously. He does think, though, that the situation is reaching a breaking point. 

He doesn’t know what to hope for. He wants Marvin to be happy, healthy, fulfilled - Mendel is his doctor, and he should want that above all. He should hope for whatever resolution will be best for Marvin. But he has spent too many months listening to Marvin, week in and week out, talk about Trina and Jason, and he cannot help but hope they are spared as much hurt as possible, one way or another.

He checks his watch. “Time’s up.”

\--- 

3\. 

_October, 1978_

Mendel isn’t sure whether Marvin will turn up to his session today. He missed his last appointment, and didn’t call with any sort of excuse. It’s rare - almost unheard of - for Marvin to miss a session. The lack of communication is making Mendel twitchy.

He watches the clock. Three minutes to the hour. Two minutes to the hour. One minute -

“Marvin!” he says, surprised and relieved when the door opens and Marvin strides in, throwing his briefcase down on the floor next to the couch and sitting down. He looks...different. Tired, and rumpled, as though he has been running his hands through his hair even more than usual. There’s a strange energy to him, too, as though he is almost vibrating, with something close to excitement and confusion but not quite either.

“Marvin?” he says again, more softly.

“I left,” Marvin says. 

Mendel wondered, last week when he didn’t show, if it might have happened, but hearing him say it is a shock. Part of him thought Marvin would stay forever, pretending to be what he wasn’t, playing the role he’s sure thousands of other men and women are playing. 

“What happened?” he asks.

Marvin rearranges himself on the couch, trying and failing to get comfortable. “It was last week,” he says. “Whizzer came for dinner again. We went into the den afterwards… I told Trina we were going to play chess.”

“And you didn’t? Play chess?”

Marvin winces. “I told you Whizzer was careless. And then...Trina came in. She came to bring us drinks.”

Mendel swallows, imagining the view of her husband that Trina might have been presented with. “You were… _in flagrante_?”

Marvin laughs, and Mendel can’t figure out whether it’s a sad sound or a happy one. “Yeah. Something like that.”

“And how did that make you feel?” Mendel asks.

Marvin blinks and looks at him. He’s still trembling very slightly, and there’s a wildness in his eyes. He shakes his head, as though he doesn’t know where to start, and Mendel realizes he hasn’t had time to process everything yet. 

“What happened next?” he asks gently. He’ll ask questions with objective answers for now. They can unravel the feelings later.

“Trina dropped the drinks on the floor.” He sighs, as though remembering it is an ordeal in itself. “It woke Jason up and he called for her, and she went to see him. I made Whizzer leave. He didn’t want to, thought he could make things better with Trina somehow, but I made him. And then… when Jason had settled, Trina came back in with a cloth and started cleaning up the drinks that had spilled on the floor.”

“Did she say anything?” Mendel asks. His chest feels tight, and he realizes his heart is hurting for all of them. 

“No.” Marvin presses his lips together. “She was pale. Crying. But she wouldn’t say anything.” He swallows, and Mendel can see something he hasn’t seen before in Marvin: guilt. “I didn’t know what to say either. Then she just went to bed and so I… went to bed too. After a while. And in the morning at breakfast, I told her we should get a divorce.”

Mendel’s eyebrows shoot up. “That was a quick decision.”

“No point dragging it out, now that she knows.” He sounds resigned, and… relieved.

Mendel takes a moment to gather his thoughts. He thought Marvin might protest, lie, tell Trina it was a mistake, a one-time thing. Beg for forgiveness. Try to keep his life that he hated and valued in equal measure. But it seems not. Mendel is a little impressed.

“What did she say?” Mendel asks, and Marvin’s eyes slide away from his. 

Silence.

“Marvin?”

“She asked me what she did wrong. And then she asked me to stay.”

Mendel feels his heart clench. “Even though…”

“Even though. I told her I couldn’t.” Marvin looks back at Mendel then, and his gaze is almost pleading. “Not now that… I just couldn’t. I couldn’t go back to how it was.”

“I understand,” Mendel says. 

“I packed some things and went to Whizzer’s. Then I spent the day looking for apartments. Moved into one three days later.”

“And Whizzer?”

“He came too. His place was a dump.”

Mendel nods. “This isn’t going to be an easy path,” he says. 

Marvin laughs drily. “I’m aware.”

“Still,” Mendel says. “Nothing’s impossible.”

He asks more questions, asks about Marvin’s new apartment, asks about Whizzer, asks about sex and work and whether Marvin’s been sleeping well. But once Marvin leaves, Mendel finds his thoughts drifting back to those Marvin left behind. To a confused young boy, and a woman who found out the truth in the worst way, who was scared and conflicted and who begged her husband not to leave her alone. He hopes, vehemently, that Trina has someone to talk to, someone to help her through this.

And he wishes, briefly, that that person was him.

\---

4\. 

_December, 1978_

"Perhaps this isn't a good idea," Mendel says. 'Perhaps' is an understatement. Marvin's idea is terrible.

"It's a great idea. It's what I want. It will be good for all of us." Marvin has his arms crossed and Mendel knows that even his gentlest tones and most subtle suggestions won't make it through. Marvin was briefly shaken after the events of last month, but it hasn't taken long for him to return to his usual bullish self.

"And they've all agreed to it?" Mendel asks for the second time. "A meal together every weeknight?" 

"Yes."

“Where?”

“At the house.”

"Who's going to cook?"

"Trina and Whizzer can do it together," Marvin says. Mendel feels a headache coming on.

"Trina and Whizzer? Together?"

Marvin shrugs. "Whizzer could use the practice in the kitchen. Hopefully she'll be able to teach him a few things. Like how not to set fire to a steak."

"And they've agreed to this part too?" Mendel asks faintly.

"Yes," Marvin says, though he sounds less sure this time.

"Don't you think that might be a little hard for them?" Mendel says. Another understatement. For Whizzer it will be awkward at best; for Trina, he cannot begin to imagine how painful it will be.

"They understand we need to do it for Jason," Marvin says. "It will...soften the blow for him, if I’m still around. And I still want a family. Trina agrees that we should do whatever it takes."

Mendel had thought his sympathy for Trina and his admiration of her had reached its height over the last few sessions, but apparently not. Eating with her husband and his lover every night is a level of self-sacrifice he rarely hears of. He cannot think of any other person he knows who would do that. And Marvin's lack of appreciation for her, even now, grates on him.

"They might fight," Mendel points out.

"Probably," Marvin says. "It'll be worth it."

Mendel hesitates, an idea rolling around in his head. It's something he's thought about before, but never felt that it would be appropriate. But now that he knows what Trina will be going through every night…

"Perhaps," he says, "you should suggest Trina come and see me."

Marvin frowns. "I should?"

"Yes. She must be suffering a lot at the moment." Mendel tries to find a way to phrase it so that it can sound as though his concern is primarily for Marvin. "If she talks through her fears with me, she may start to heal, and that should make your evenings together run more smoothly."

Marvin nods slowly. "I would like her to have someone to talk to," he admits, surprising Mendel a little with the unusual softness in his voice.

"Well, then," Mendel says. "I'll look forward to her call."

\---

5\. 

_January, 1979_

Mendel is nervous. He’s never been nervous before meeting a patient before, and he’s not entirely sure why he is this time, even with the self-diagnosis tools at his disposal. Perhaps it’s just the oddity of the situation: preparing to treat someone who he already knows so much about.

There’s a knock on his office door, light and hesitant. He straightens his cardigan and almost trips over his feet as he hurries across the room.

“Trina,” he says, as he swings open the door, and he’s glad he spoke before seeing her, because when their eyes meet the moment steals his breath from him.

He expected her to be traditionally beautiful, and she is, but there’s so much more than beauty in her face. Looking at her, he can see it all: the years she spent putting her heart and soul into her family that show in every tiny groove in her skin, the pain and the heartache that live in her eyes, the strength and the steel that are in the set of her jaw. She must know that he's aware of so many of the things she has been through, yet she stands before him tall and proud even in her vulnerability.

“Hello,” she says simply, and her voice cracks just a little.

“Come in, come in,” he says, and he offers his hand as she enters. She grasps it, and her skin is warm and dry and so very soft against his own. 

“Sit down, my dear,” he tells her, and she does as he says, tucking herself neatly onto the couch and smoothing her skirt. She unwinds her scarf from her neck and twists it nervously between her fingers. Then she looks up at him, and her gaze is full of expectancy, hopefulness, and the first tentative bloom of trust. She wants to believe that he can help her.

He can. He will. He decides, right now, that he will do anything to help her. She needs him, and he won’t fail her.

He tells her to tell her story, and the words pour out of her: words that have been pent up inside her too long, words that ebb and flow like the ocean. Some are spoken in grief and bitterness, some in sweet nostalgia, some in love and affection, and some in fiery determination that she will not be broken.

She is everything Mendel had imagined, and more.

It’s Trina who points out, eventually, that their time is up. Mendel might have stayed there forever, listening to her.

“Return next Friday,” he says, as she gets up from the couch, and they clasp hands again. “I admit,” he says, softly, “I admire you.”

As she leaves, the scarf she’s been holding throughout the session, clutching to her neck for comfort, slips through her fingers and falls to the floor. Mendel picks it up and starts to say her name, to call her back, but he can’t find his voice. Instead, he holds the scarf gently, reverently, and runs the satin through his fingers. He brings it up to his face and breathes in Trina’s scent.

He calculates how many hours it is until her next appointment.

And he realizes that for the first time, he has a favorite patient. It’s unfair and unprofessional, and he doesn’t care at all.


End file.
